Duke of Richmond and Gordon obituary 1929 - 2017: Custodian of his family seat, Goodwood

Duke of Richmond and Gordon obituary 1929 - 2017: Custodian of his family seat, Goodwood

WHEN Charles Henry Gordon-Lennox was still the Earl of March he moved to Goodwood with his wife Susan and quickly set about reviving the fortunes of the West Sussex stately home and its 12,000-acre estate, which had been in his family for the past 300 years.

That was in 1969, 20 years before he inherited the title of 10th Duke of Richmond and Gordon on his father, Freddie’s, death but from that moment the Duke was intent on leaving Goodwood in the best possible shape for his son, Charles.

He achieved this by making the estate more commercial: offering the house for weddings, reopening the aerodrome and establishing a flying school and encouraging organic farming on the land.

For those 750,000 annual visitors to Goodwood there are also two 18-hole golf courses, a 91-bedrooom hotel, restaurants and of course the estate’s historic motor-racing circuit, with its yearly Goodwood Festival of Speed, the brainchild of the Duke’s son.

But perhaps most importantly the Duke put the glorious back in Glorious Goodwood by completely rebuilding the estate’s racecourse including a £5million grandstand.

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We decided that if we were going to adopt they would be children who would not otherwise be fostered or adopted

Duke of Richmond and Gordon

The son of the 9th Duke and his wife Elizabeth, a clergyman’s daughter, he attended Eton before studying theology at William Temple College, then training and working as a chartered accountant.

He moved to Goodwood House at the age of 40 and remained there with his wife and five children until 1994 when his only son, Charles, moved in with his family.

In addition to Charles, who has now inherited his father’s titles, the couple had four daughters, two of whom were adopted in the 1960s. Maria’s father was Ghanaian and Nimmy’s father was South African, and while they were both born in this country, mixed-race adoption was far from the norm at the time.

As the Duke revealed in an interview in 2008: “It was a deliberate thing that we decided that if we were going to adopt they would be children who would not otherwise be fostered or adopted.

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Vintage race cars takes part in a race during the Goodwood Festival in September 2017

“I knew certain parts of Africa quite well so it seemed sensible to go for African children. Not everyone in the family was completely happy but after a year or so they came around.”

The Duke, who could often be seen walking around the grounds of Goodwood in his trademark Panama hat, was chairman, patron, president and director of numerous local companies, societies and charities and Chancellor of the University of Sussex from 1985 to 1998.

He is survived by his wife, Susan, and their children Ellinor, Charles, Maria, Naomi (Nimmy) and Louisa.

Duke of Richmond and Gordon born on September 19, 1929 and died September 1, 2017, aged 87.